Marketspace Advisor

Relevance is established in a fraction of a second

I listened in on a MITX lunch teleconference today called “Email Campaign Metrics & Tactics: 2006 Research Results” moderated by Anne Holland and Stefan Tornquist of MarketingSherpa. They did a good job presenting some highlights of their email research.

One particularly interesting point they made was about the results of an eyetracking study which compared two emails about housing deals in San Francisco -- one lead with a photograph of houses and the other lead with a block of text.  The email with the photograph, i.e. the *visual* email, was twice as effective at the three metrics they were tracking:  open rate, click-thru and conversion.  Bottom line -- relevance is established in a fraction of a second.  And these findings are consistent with the results of the eyetracking studies we did at Palm when I worked there, of two different versions of proposed homepages.  Those that provided more visual cues were easier to grasp, were more scannable, and were ultimately more successful.

Auto Advertising: Past The Tipping Point

Over the last few weeks, we’ve had many conversations on the topic of “new media:  which kinds, how much, and how”.  In answering these questions, we find that the context needs to be re-set.  We’ve characterized context shifts in the following ways:

1. A technology shift – from fewer media and formats, toward many more form factors and many formats;
2. A channel and message shift – from control of a message you distribute, toward influence over a message distributed by customers themselves;
3. A targeting shift – from segments of many, defined demographically, to segments of one, defined behaviorally.

The implications for how marketers engage customers run deep:  more experimentation, more inclusion, more sensitivity.  In fact, so deep that it may be more than most organizations feel they can absorb.  But the data on new media’s penetration into the buying process for many customers suggests marketers may no longer have the luxury of changing practices at their own pace.  For example, this morning, Jeffrey sent me the following release:

Polk Calls Traditional Media 'Nearly Obsolete' Among New Auto Buyers
Joe Mandese

Describing traditional mass media as "nearly obsolete" among first-time car buyers, a well regarded auto industry researcher Tuesday released findings of a new study showing the Internet now is the dominant medium among new car buyers. The study, by the Polk Center for Automotive Studies, shows that TV has fallen to 8.2 percent, magazines to 4.4 percent, newspapers to 3.6 percent and radio to 1.1 percent of consumers who deem them the "most important informational tool" in their first-time car purchase.

"The Internet's relevance in the 18- to 30-year age group has reached critical mass and is completely reconfiguring how car companies need to reach out to first-time buyers," said Lonnie Miller, managing director at Polk, who said that shift is reflected in more aggressive Internet marketing efforts by both manufacturers and local auto dealers. She predicted other emerging technologies including online podcasts, mobile media, and video-on-demand would further change the way the auto industry markets itself.

"Harnessing mobile media technology will be the automotive industry's most important marketing challenge -- and opportunity -- in the next decade," she said, emphasizing that the so-called Y generation is abandoning traditional forms of advertising, and that it is imperative for automakers to develop deals with emerging media technology developers.

The findings come as more bad news for the traditional media marketplace - especially local TV stations - where automotive advertising is the largest single advertising category, but which has been eroding rapidly.

A total of 366 first-time vehicle buyers (ages 18-30) participated in the study between November 4 and 10, 2005. Complete results of the report are available on http://www.polk.com .

Click to read this article on the MediaPostPublications.com website.

Becoming Fit for 21st Century Customers

One of the conclusions from the opening article of the Economist’s new Survey of the Company is that “21st-century organisations are not fit for 21st-century workers.”  I propose the Marketspace corollary: “21st century companies are not fit for 21st-century customers.”

“The New Organisation” explains that vertical organizations amended with “ad hoc” matrices make it harder, not easier, to do professional work.  Companies have lagged to reorganize around new technologies or modern evolutions of the buying process.  Just as they failed to transform internally, many companies have failed to intelligently adapt the way they interact with their customers.  If William Whyte’s “organization man” of the 1950s really has evolved into the “networked person” of today, companies must gain a better understanding of not only what she buys and uses, but also where and how she buys and uses her information and services.  As we suggest in Best Face Forward, customer experience is the tool for differentiation in today’s business world.  The accelerating growth of the networked person makes putting your Best Face Forward even more important.

Voice-Search on the Move

Conversational voice recognition technology from VoiceBox will be used in future Toyota cars for easier control of telematics.  According to CNET News.com, the new VoiceBox technology will allow users to speak naturally, rather than confine them to a rigid list of commands.  VoiceBox products, using algorithms called Knowledge Enhanced Search and Speech Recognition (KESSR), use contextual clues and prior usage to determine the intent of what might otherwise be an ambiguous command.  Further still, the system will prompt the user with multiple options if it cannot decide how to proceed.  According to PC Magazine, VoiceBox software understood 90 percent of sentences such as "Play me a song by the Rolling Stones" or "What is the weather like in Boston ?"

VoiceBox has also partnered with XM Satellite Radio to develop voice-search features for subscribers and with Johnson Controls, one of the largest tech suppliers to the auto industry.  The first product of this partnership, a voice-search device for Apple’s iPod, will be released this year.

Voice-search is becoming increasingly necessary as we fill our lives with content-laden devices such as PDAs and iPods and need to quickly cut through the clutter of multiple feeds of information.  Enabling users to use natural speech for these search tasks is a commanding step forward—and not just in attention-demanding environments like the automobile.

Face Recognition and Customer Service

Via Krishnan Menon's blog Brutal Clarity, found Riya.com.  The mind races to, among other things, how retailers might use this to help clerks recognize customers and provide better service...

Albertson's and Alternatives

Saw the news that Supervalu and CVS are buying grocery chain Albertson's today.  Some might be tempted to think this is simply a consolidation play -- add a large, low-growth revenue base over fixed distribution / overhead structure and squeeze a few bucks out of the synergies (close some stores, etc.).  But maybe their new owners see something more?  Here's a picture that's caught our eye...

Customers + Technology = Customer Service for CSRs

Via Rob Scoble’s blog, Rick Segal’s must-read story about how our experience of a common scenario is being revolutionized:

http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2006/01/the_new_digital.html